


Precipice

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Meetings, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, Blow Jobs, First Kiss, First Meetings, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lighthouse Keeper AU, Lighthouse!Keeper!John, Lighthouses, Loneliness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 18:11:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11190549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: Ten years after his return from the war, lighthouse keeper John Watson meets consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, pacing at the cliff's edge.





	Precipice

**Author's Note:**

> Please note there are references to suicide and suicidal behaviour/ideation in this story, though no explicit descriptions of such, and no one in the story commits suicide.
> 
> *  
> This story was commissioned and prompted by Flaunt It.

Feet in lambs’ wool-lined slippers, John shuffled out of the tiny bedroom and across the breadth of the cottage to the ancient woodstove, knowing his way even in the pre-dawn dark. He stirred the embers to reveal an orange glow beneath grey-white ash, then set two more split logs inside. He lingered there enjoying the radiant heat, waiting for the logs to catch.

“Don’t think I don’t see you over there,” he accused, casting a sideways glance. “One eye open. You don’t fool me. _Just once_ you could take a turn at this, and let a man sleep.” Both brown eyes opened, and John tsked at the utterly unbothered expression on his face. “Useless mutts, the pair of you,” he muttered, grinning. “You too, little madam, don’t think you’re off the hook.” The blue eyes remained closed and she rolled her dappled head, demonstrating for John how deeply asleep she was. John shut the stove’s door and moved around the little table and its two mismatched wood chairs to start the water for his tea. He stood by, gazing out the window into the darkness. What stars remained in the lightening sky were dulled down, their sparkle faded to pale grey. Dawn was still an hour off, but as was its habit, it dropped hints of its arrival well in advance.

Once he started fixing his breakfast in earnest—toasting bread and slicing cured meat, frying eggs in just a little butter—the dogs put on a show of having been woken by the noise, and came to investigate, tails wagging, shaking the sleep-creases out of their shaggy coats. He tugged their ears, scratched their chins, freed the latch on the dog-door so they could go chase the roosting gulls off the stone wall at the bottom of the front garden.

He ate at a slow but steady pace and did the washing up right away, set out the dogs’ bowls, then returned to the bedroom to dress and make up the bed. Gave his beard a good scratch and cleaned his teeth. Left his slippers by the kitchen door, trading them for weatherproof boots left by the stove to dry overnight. The dogs checked in with him briefly on his way along the crushed-stone path to the tower, then bounded off again to manage the gulls.

On his way up the twisting, slate stairs John carried a dustpan and whisk-broom, swept each step ahead of him, and emptied it in a bin at the top of the steps in the lantern room. He circled around in the shadow of the lamp, coin-sized dollops of light chasing him in circles as it turned just above his head. Nothing of note in plain sight; sometimes birds got in—one rather determined stonechat had built three nests under the eaves in a month’s time and John had removed each one with care, checking for eggs, finding none, and sweeping the floor of the fallen twigs and long strips of grass—but just then there was nothing to find but the gears, his bag of rags and three spray bottles of vinegar he used to wipe the glass. On the window of the east-facing side was an old marker, a narrow vertical strip of metal gone green with age, crossed near the top by a horizontal mark: _Sun Must Be At Least This High_ , he often thought. The bottom edge of the orange-white globe was brushing the mark, so he threw the switch and the light was snuffed out, the rotor slowing, its pitch changing, until at last it would settle and stop. Once it had, John fetched out a cloth and went to work polishing the lenses.

An hour later he was out behind the cottage, weeding a little in his veg patch, the first autumn harvest nearly ready to be fetched indoors. When he’d finished, he threw balls for the dogs along an alley of green scrub-grass between the cottage and the cliff that rose up and around like a stoop-shouldered man curling an arm to embrace the cove. John pitched as hard as he could, the shepherds dashing hell-for-leather after their neon-bright rubber balls, then trotting back to redeposit them in their basket by the fence.

After they’d been at it for twenty minutes or so, he warned them their time was nearly up so they’d better make it good, then threw one more for each of them. But as they reached the spot where both balls had likely rolled to rest, the dogs charged on past, to where the rocks started—a treacherous collection of jagged boulders—some rough and impressive, big as refrigerators, tractor tyres, and holiday geese, all of them spilled out over a carpet of gravel sharp and small as arrowheads—directly beneath the highest point of the cliff. Each dog barked once to alert him, then sank onto their bellies with their heads held high, noses pointed into the cliff’s shadow.

“Not again,” John said to no one. “Not today. Crissakes, it’s not even Christmas.”

He started jogging to catch them up. Sure enough, there was movement atop the cliff, distinctly that of some person pacing back and forth at a jerky, rapid clip. John knew no magic words—he’d said many different things in the past; about half had worked—but one phrase had worked twice, and that would have to suffice as evidence it was the right thing to say.

“Please don’t jump!” he bellowed upward through cupped hands. The dogs came to sit by his feet, looking  up to him, at attention as they awaited further orders.

The figure—tallish, broadish, probably a man—stopped pacing but as he was backlit by the sun, it was impossible to make out any detail of his features or age. John shielded his squinting eyes.

John heard a deep voice, three syllables he couldn’t make out clearly because they came on a breeze and landed off to his right, then echoed around the cove.

“Don’t!” John urged. “Don’t! Jump!” His shoulders were taut beneath the cabled wool of his jumper, and he felt a terrible, familiar desperation pricking at the edges of his awareness. What else could he say?

The man spoke again, a sort of staccato muttering that may not even have been a reply. But he didn’t jump.

“Oi, dogs.” They knew the stern tone and got to their feet, poised for action. “Away to me,” he ordered, and swung his arm in an arc that echoed the shape of the cliff. “Go get’im. Away!”

Off they shot, knew just the route to take around the spill of cruel rocks to find their loping, scrambling way up the slope. It seemed forever, John waiting there in the scrub, while his mutts obeyed his command and their instincts to bring a straggler back into the fold.

The man went briefly out of sight before drifting back near the edge with his hand raised near his head; John tensed. He could hear the dogs barking a storm, and the man stepped back again. John whistled them back, followed it with a call of, “Come by! Dogs, come by!” He waited, gaze tracking anxiously between the precipice—still empty for now, a good sign—and the spot on the slope where the dogs should soon come into view. John started walking up to meet them, aware that the thing at the moment was just to get the fella off the edge; everything that came after that was just paperwork.

Not soon enough, the dogs crashed into view, running half-circles around the man, beside and behind him, showing him the way to sea level.

“I think your dogs are herding me,” the man said, quite jolly-sounding given where they’d found him.

“Indeed they are,” John agreed. The distance closed—yard by yard—until John finally got a good look at him—improbably handsome, with squinting pale eyes and a swirling thicket of dark hair, dressed in a ridiculously fine suit beneath a long, showy wool coat. Inexplicably, the man’s inappropriate-for-the-setting gear made John feel self-conscious about his own necessary work boots, jeans, and slightly-stretched jumper. He ran his hands down the fronts of his thighs, wiping off any residual dog slobber.

Apparently undaunted, the man stuck out his hand for John to shake. He did not smile. “Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “Sorry to intrude.”

“I’m John Watson.” John gestured first at the red-and-white dog and added, “That’s Tugboat. And this is Maggie the Cat.” He scratched the blue-eyed dog beneath her dappled chin. “Tugger and Mags. We don’t stand on formalities here.” John crouched down to pet and scratch them, gave them praise. “Very good work, you brutes. Well done.”

“Yes, thank you both,” Sherlock said, and he smiled at last, only at the dogs, and only for an instant.

“Home time,” John ordered, and the dogs trotted away toward the cottage. Turning to Sherlock he said, “Get nervous any time I see someone up there; thanks for coming down.”

“Your dogs made clear I had little choice in the matter,” Sherlock said with a tilt of his head. “Forgive my trespassing; I didn’t know lighthouses were still manned. I assumed they must be automated by now, here in the 21st century.”

John gestured for Sherlock to accompany him on the walk back to the cottage, and they fell into a side-by-side stroll. “Yeah, most of them are,” John replied. “It’s a program put together for war veterans?” He cleared his throat. “It’s not a life most people would choose, but seems to suit a particular breed.”

Sherlock looked across at him, eyes narrowed. After a beat of silence, he abruptly smacked his hands together in front of his waist and cried out, “Oh!” John started, blinked. “I’m not a _suicide_ ,” Sherlock intoned. John raised his eyebrows. “You thought I was up there contemplating a jump.”

“Most are, when they’re standing at the edge like that,” John explained.

“No, no. I’m on a case. You see, I’m a detective.”

“Wouldn’t have taken you for a policeman,” John said, with suspicion evident in his tone. _Not in that get-up_ , he thought. _With that decidedly non-regulation hairstyle_.

“No. God, no,” Sherlock frowned at him. “I’m a consulting detective. The police call me when they’ve cocked it up beyond all hope and need a rescue.”

“And you can resolve that?” John asked, less suspicious and more amused.

“Every time.” Sherlock said plainly, not boasting, or at least plainly unaware it sounded like a boast.

“You’d do well here at the bottom of the cliff, then. Folks beyond hope and in need of rescue.” John tipped his head toward the ledge behind them.

Sherlock’s first reply was a skeptical hum. “People—not really my area.”

John harrumphed a knowing, humourless laugh. “No? We’ve that in common.” They’d reached the gate; the dogs had pushed it open and left it for them. “Well if I haven’t saved your life, at least let me give you a cup of tea? Maybe the tuppence tour?”

The lighthouse was not a particularly lovely one, and though the light station was not on an island, it was still quite isolated—the nearest village just over fifteen miles away—and John did not get busloads of tourists the way some keepers did. A few times each summer some old geezer with a checklist would drive up, leave his wife waiting in the car while John followed him up the twisting stair to the lamp room. Once there’d come an autistic teenager with a particular penchant, his semi-apologetic parents visibly relieved when John let them have the run of the place, then gamely listened to an encyclopedic recitation of lighthouse facts over the course of an hour. Most days, though, he saw no one. Twice a month he drove the dogs into town in a semi-reliable work truck, picked up the post and stocked up on groceries. He’d have lunch in the little pub, one glass of lager, chat with the old fellas hanging about while Tug and Mags waited outside. By the time he resumed the driver’s seat, he was exhausted from smiling, making small talk, anticipation that at any moment anyone could come from anywhere and demand more of his energy. No, people were no longer John’s “area,” either.

John gestured again, and Sherlock went through the gate, obviously expensive shoes slipping audibly on the gravel walkway. Once they were inside, the dogs back on their beds by the stove, which John stirred and fed, Sherlock shed his heavy coat and hung it on a peg by the door as if he did so every day, and unself-consciously eyed up the place. In the sitting room, a worn chesterfield sofa with badly chipped and soft-cornered wood feet, a low table in front of it, and John’s armchair with its good reading light standing by. An undersized but sturdy wood desk and a bog-standard plastic rolling chair with webbed back and black seat. The dogs’ beds. A dock for his phone and tablet, with speakers for his music and podcasts. On the kitchen side of the room, the round table and its two chairs, shrunk-down versions of the usual appliances—cooktop, oven, fridge—a wide soapstone sink that must have come from somewhere else once upon a time, and the electric kettle on the worktop. John did his laundry  by hand in a tub out back, hung it on a line to dry.

Every inch of bare wall, floor to ceiling, had been fitted up with wood-plank shelves, which were positively groaning with books. The lighthouse keeper’s library was a sanity-saving tradition, and John had inherited a starter one of about two dozen books, only a handful salvageable from the persistent damp, and had since built it up with his own finds. The villagers kept a paperboard box in the post office and left their discards for him; it filled up every month or two and John took it, returning the box empty the following week. Aside from the utterly random titles that had come his way over the years, he particularly collected stories about suicides, and two shelves over the desk were dedicated to them.

“Make yourself comfortable, have a seat,” John encouraged, and crossed to the kitchen to fill the teapot. He arranged mismatched cups and saucers, spoons. “Milk and sugar?”

“Please.” Sherlock, instead of sitting, was scanning the spines of John’s books with his hands clasped behind his back like a man looking closely at paintings in a gallery, reminding himself not to give in to the temptation to touch. “You’ve read them all?” he asked.

“Most of them. Some of the required ones I couldn’t swallow in one go I’ve set aside to pick up later—Homer, James Joyce, the Bible—but anything less heady, I’ve passed through.” He finished fixing their tea and crossed the room, offering a cup to Sherlock. The dogs looked up lazily from their beds with half-open eyes just in case John had a biscuit to share, immediately went back to dozing when they saw he did not.

“Thank you.” Sherlock cradled the saucer delicately in a massive hand, fingers and thumb long and elegant as he lifted the cup to his lips. “Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“Sorry?”

“You said manning the lighthouse is a program for war veterans; you’re clearly too young to have parachuted into the Falklands.”

John smiled at the joke, though Sherlock did not. “Uh, Afghanistan.” They stood at angles to each other, an arm’s reach apart. “I was a doctor as well as a soldier. Then someone shot me, and then I was nothing.”

“Where were you shot?”

“Helmand.”

“That’s not what I—”

“It’s not really something to ask.”

“Is it not?”

“No.”

They were quiet a moment, sipping their tea, Sherlock looking at the books, the ceiling, and the dogs, and John looking at Sherlock.

“Don’t get many visitors,” John said. “A third of them suicides, which brings a whole raft of people but only for the day. You said you were working on a case?”

“Mm,” Sherlock’s expression grew animated, warming to the subject. “A man claims he saw a certain cargo ship from that spot, on a day in June, but it’s impossible.”

“And that means?”

“He’s a liar.”

John nodded, though the answer was somewhat anticlimactic.

“And that he murdered his father,” Sherlock added, eyes glinting something like mischief. John laughed and Sherlock looked unmistakably pleased. “How many is not many?”

“Visitors?”

“Suicides.”

“Three in the last sixteen months? Only one successful.”

“A quirky phrase, that,” Sherlock mused. “ _Successful_ suicide.”

“Suppose it depends on your perspective.” John replied.

“You mentioned a tour?” Sherlock said, and set his half-full teacup in its saucer atop the dainty writing desk.

“Sure, of course. This is the cottage, obviously. Built in the mid ‘30s when the previous one burned down after a lightning strike.” John lead them to the door and the dogs alerted, but when they weren’t invited, drooped down again to finish their nap. John circled the exterior of the cottage, pointed out his laundry tub and vegetable garden, the work shed where he kept his tools and did his tinkering on the gears and whatnot, as needed. Everything in sight with even a hint of metal on it had to be wiped down with dry rags at least once a day to get the sea off, or it would be a pile of rust in no time.

“In the old days the keeper would have lived here alone, though his family might have stayed in the summer—any kids would have been delivered into town—often the wife, too—for school during the rest of the year. Back when the lamps were real wicks with real flames, there was endless work to keep them going, and if a fog came in the keeper might stay in the tower until it lifted, sending specific signals at regular intervals for hours at a time.”

“How is it powered?” Sherlock asked, as they approached the light tower, crunching along another gravel path, narrow enough that they were mindful not to touch shoulders or elbows as they went.

“Solar, with back-up generators in case of failure. All I have to do is throw a switch twice a day. A second one—if there’s weather—for the fog bell.”

“Bell? Really?” Sherlock was incredulous.

“It’s a romantic holdover to call it a fog bell; nowadays it’s a recording of a fog horn,” John admitted, and Sherlock yelped a little laugh. “You laugh, but it’s loud as hell and twice as annoying. I have ear muffs. The dogs, too.

“Anyway, you can see a mark there,” John pointed partway up the tower, to a bright blue X painted on the side about eighteen feet over their heads. “That’s from high water, 1897. The keeper managed to keep the lamp lit, had to stay up there two days and nights until the sea subsided. In the middle of his log book, at what should have been dawn on the second day, he wrote down the Last Rites for himself.”

“That’s brilliant,” Sherlock enthused.

“I admit I agree, even though it’s morbid.” Inside the tower, John let Sherlock climb the steps ahead of him, both men sliding their grips up along the thick, coiled metal cable that served as a handrail. John continued his speech, and keeping his breath was a surprising challenge—he’d mounted the narrow stair countless times, but never had anyone to talk to while he did so. “The first landing we’ll come to, there’s a door to the watch room. We’ll pass it by for now, head up to have a look at the lamp—that’s where the money is.”

Sherlock made an amused sound, his footfalls coming heavier, trudging, the longer they climbed. “It was built when?” he managed, sounding huffy.

“1815. The electric lamp came in during the early 1940s, and the solar upgrade shortly before I came—been here nearly ten years, now.”

“Long time for a lonely life,” Sherlock commented, and the air went taut with awareness of the intimacy of the comment. John cleared his throat.

“Lonesome, I’d say, more than lonely.”

“Ah.” Sherlock signaled understanding and agreement both in the single syllable.

“Here we are,” John announced, decisive. “Step to your right; there’s room enough for us both, but barely.”

Inside the lamp room, John explained the gear box that spun the massive, glass optic around the lamp—even opened up the metal door so Sherlock could see the motor—and the lenses, though Sherlock’s comments made it clear he either already knew or instantly understood the particular way the glass was arrayed, and for what purpose. The space around the lantern was barely wider than a man’s body, so they stood side by side, with a sturdy wood lattice over their heads a ceiling of sorts, allowing diamantes of mid-morning sunlight to shower the walls and floor, their clothing and faces. John pointed out the marks on the windows that let him know the time had come to light or douse the lantern.

“On clear days, like today, of course,” he clarified. “In weather, the light stays on throughout. Some days I’ll run up and down the steps five or six times, if it’s lively.”

“The whole business could be easily automated,” Sherlock noted, one eyebrow lifting.

“Yes, it could,” John agreed. “But then what use would there be for a man who needs to be busy and have routines, who can’t tolerate unexpected noise or too much company?” His tone was mild, even slightly amused, but Sherlock pinched his lips shut between his teeth and tilted his head to look up through the lattice. John took pity and drew down the hinged door in the lattice so Sherlock could have a look at part of the optic array. “Shall I light it?” he grinned.

“Can you? In fair weather?”

“Put it in the log as maintenance. Sometimes I have to spin it in daylight, to reach the lenses for cleaning, and that.”

“Yes, then. Please.”

John threw the switch and the engine rattled, belts and gears humming to life. With only a brief creak, the optic began to turn, and the scattered coins of sunlight shimmered as the shadows shifted. Sherlock watched through the trap door, his eyes scanning, lips parting in a smile.

“It’s a magnificent thing,” he said at last. John crossed his arms in front of his chest to contain its puffing up a bit. Another moment passed and Sherlock said, “I thought it would be noisier.”

“Not so bad, no,” John agreed. He reached to power it down and its rotation devolved. John fixed the trap door back in place with a sturdy click of its latch. “This came loose and hit me, once,” he reported. “Lucky it was just my shoulder; I’m sure it would have knocked me out.”

“The dogs would come find you,” Sherlock guessed, and John started down the steps, Sherlock trailing him.

“Punchline, they can’t—or won’t—climb stairs,” John grinned. “Once, the sea was come up just ten yards or so from the house, so I decided we should climb the tower, and I had to carry them. Two trips up and down, and a lot of their size is fur, but even still, they’re no lightweights.”

Sherlock chuckled, and John shouldered open the watch room door. Inside was a red metal cabinet full of tools, wooden crates of emergency rations and bottled water, an old radio set, and a narrow wood-framed bed made up in military style, with extra blankets folded beneath on the smooth wood floor. There were shallow, high windows nearly all the way around.

“The old fellas would stay up here during weather, minding the lamp; I don’t have much use for it except for that flood I mentioned. But just in case,” John shrugged. Sherlock walked the border with that same interested but careful manner he’d displayed since examining John’s books in his cottage’s sitting room. He stopped to gaze out one of the windows, facing cliffwards. John fidgeted with the locks on the front of the tool chest.

“Thank you,” Sherlock said, still staring out at the rocks.

“No trouble,” John said. “Don’t get much cause to give the tour. Hope my patter was all right.”

“In point of fact, I _am_ a suicide,” Sherlock said, punctuating it with a single downward nod of his head. “But not today.”

John was dumbstruck, dropped his hands by his sides and stared at Sherlock’s back. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

“As I said, I thought all lighthouses were unmanned—should have done more research, apparently—and I don’t wish to be found.” He turned suddenly, and John couldn’t reckon the look on his face, only that it was absent despair, or even embarrassment.

“At all?”

“Better that way, I think. For anyone who might be bothered by my absence.” He turned his palms up and let them drift— _nothing for it_ —and shook his head. “Which is your favourite?” Sherlock asked, then clarified, “Your books about suicide.”

John’s neck flushed hot beneath the edge of his beard; he felt caught out. Not that it was a secret; the collection was purposely shelved together, at eye level, though he found it remarkable that in a few brief minutes perusing the spines, Sherlock had made the connection.

“I actually was reminded of one story, when you first came down the hill,” John said, an automatic spill of a confession that surprised him. It seemed a time for naked confession; it would have been unfair of him to hide his shame when Sherlock had already unzipped himself and so freely showed John his bones. “A drowned man washes up in a village where no one has ever planted flowers, and the men go off in search of someone to claim him while the women clean and dress him and comb his hair and fall in love with him. Because he’s so handsome.”

Sherlock cast his eyes at the floor briefly, then passed John a glance that invited him to finish.

“No one claims him so they decide to give him their kind of funeral, dumping his body into the sea from the cliff’s edge. They make up a family tree so the whole village become his kin. The men get fucked off at the women because they won’t let him go, keep piling little trinkets on his body, but at last they give him to the sea, and after he’s gone, they rebuild their houses and paint them bright colours, and plant flowers on the cliff so sailors going by will notice their village, and know it was the handsome drowned man’s home.”

“Why should they want the sailors to know that?”

“Because once he belonged to them, everything was different.”

Sherlock let go a quick, quiet hum and looked thoughtful. John shrugged, “Anyway, it’s a good story. Though it doesn’t technically say the handsome man drowned on purpose, that’s how I’ve always read it. I suppose he may have just been a fisherman or sailor washed overboard in a storm.”

“Or a murder victim,” Sherlock suggested.

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned murder since we’ve met.”

“Married to my work.”

John nodded his understanding. He realised it was probably insufficient not to take some action in the face of Sherlock’s admission about why he’d come to the light station. Maybe call the constable in the village, or that retired nurse; she’d know what steps to take, who to contact. John reckoned he should know some of that himself, and wondered why after all his years, eight foiled suicides and six “successful” ones later, it had never occurred to him that perhaps there should be a procedure in place.

“Should I maybe call—”

Sherlock took one long step forward, gripped John’s jumper-sleeve in his fist, the other hand catching the back of John’s neck, and pressed a crashing, intrusive kiss against John’s slack lips. For a panicked second, John held hands against Sherlock’s chest, thrown up to defend himself against the sudden approach. Sherlock made a mournful noise and in that instant an aching grief washed through John, rushing inward from just beneath the surface his skin, pinching his guts and heart, weakening his knees so he thought he may not be able to trust them. Instead of pushing, he pulled, Sherlock’s jacket lapels creasing between his fingers and thumbs, and instead of having kisses pressed upon him, John kissed—licking back, nibbling Sherlock’s lips with his own. He felt Sherlock uncoiling, fingers coming loose from their grip, breath softening.

Sherlock stepped back just as suddenly as he had come, covered his mouth with one hand, avoiding John’s gaze, and wiped his lips with his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he said haltingly. “That was.”

“No.”

“ _Ridiculous_.”

“It’s fine.”

Sherlock shook his head, sighed, near-laughing.

“Really, it’s fine,” John told him. There was a long silence. The sun had risen to an angle that put the room at the edge of too much warmth. John thought to suggest they descend, perhaps invite him to stay for lunch before he went away. And come to think of it, how had he gotten there in the first place? But instead of saying any of that, or anything at all, he closed the space between them and took Sherlock’s face between his hands and kissed him.

There was desperation in it, tight-clinging, like drowning men grasping at the offered hand. John steered them back to sit on the little bed, teeth clacking uncomfortably, knees in the way, the angles all wrong. He tucked his face into Sherlock’s open collar, rubbed his lips along the gritty stubble on his throat. Sherlock’s hand rubbed rough against the front of John’s jeans and he had no room to open his legs, to push back, though he needed it more just then than he needed his breath. No one had kissed him, touched him, wanted him in so, so long. Forever long. He’d made himself forget, somehow, that it really _was_ a lonely life, and now the loneliness was undammed and John held on for fear the rush of it would wash them both out to sea.

He was sweaty beneath his jumper; the room was hot and so were they. Sherlock’s neck was sturdy even though his throat looked painfully vulnerable, and his hand at John’s bicep was clenched, digging in as if to drag John away somewhere with enormous urgency. His hand between John’s legs was not gentle, and John couldn’t be sure which of them the motion was meant to please. John groaned into Sherlock’s open mouth and ran fingertips over his shirt front, found the edges of his pectoral muscles and then the rumpled softness of his nipple, firming tight beneath John's touch.

There was an uncomfortable twinge in the back of his waist and he raised his knee onto the mattress, adjusting the angle to relieve the discomfort. Sherlock went for John’s buttons and zip, and his gaze staring into John’s eyes was more naked than any expanse of half-dressed skin. John felt shamed by it; he was not up to the challenge of such an expression.

“You don’t have to—”

“Please.”

Sherlock’s back bent, everything awkward, but his mouth was hot, deep, and John shuddered, forgave himself in advance that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—last. John touched the back of Sherlock’s bowed head, let his fingers ride the waves of the neck in motion, the curling edges of Sherlock’s dark hair. John’s head sank back until it touched the wall, rough-hewn, splinters catching in his hair. Sherlock’s hand was tight around the waistband of John’s jeans, the fabric bunched around the leather belt, and he hummed. John squeezed the back of his neck, a warning, and pinched his eyes closed, let the wash of wave after rushing wave tumble him, disorienting him, causing him to lose sense of which was the way to drown, and which the way to the shore.

Sherlock uncurled his long back, and John kissed him, a bitter kiss that Sherlock tried to reject, but John persisted, stealing the shame out of it to keep for himself. After a few fumbling moments, Sherlock had dropped his hand into his own lap, and John rested his palm there on Sherlock’s wrist, touched his fingers, and Sherlock nuzzled lips and nose into John’s beard. His spine curved, closing down, and John whispered against his temple, _yes_ , only that, eliciting from Sherlock a sad-sounding whimper that rolled and spread into a moan. When he had subsided, John put arms around him, held him hard and close, and Sherlock collapsed into the embrace, heavy and hot, breath damp and stale with leftover kisses as he sighed it away.

They reassembled themselves, amid an exchange of inquiring, baffled glances, then descended the stairs, the air cooling as they returned to sea level. The dogs were racing around behind the house, chasing each other, warning the gulls away with quick yaps. John and Sherlock stood watching them for a minute or two.

“I’m sorry to have intruded,” Sherlock apologised once again. “I should leave you in peace.” His tone indicated he meant all three of them—John and the dogs—had been discomfited by his unexpected visit to the light station.

John crossed his arms and brushed aside a stone with the edge of his boot. “Let me at least feed you lunch,” he offered. “It’s a long way back to town.”

“I,” Sherlock said, but it ended in a shake of his head.

John met his eyes. Pale blue-green, nothing like the sea. Glassy with expectation and some awful, long-lived thing John recognised as his own.

“You should stay,” John said, with finality but also a touch of surprise. He cleared his throat. “Maybe after a while you can switch on the light.”

 

-END-

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Precipice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13916052) by [Lockedinjohnlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockedinjohnlock/pseuds/Lockedinjohnlock)




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